STONE, SAMUEL (1602–1663), puritan divine, son of John Stone, a freeholder of Hertford was born in that town and baptised at All Saints on 30 July 1602. He was educated at Hale's grammar school, and proceeded to Cambridge in 1620 as a pensioner of Emmanuel College, matriculating on 19 April, and graduating B.A. in 1623 and M.A. in 1627. He studied theology at Ashen in Essex, under Richard Blackerby, a non-subscriber. In 1630 he went to Towcester as a private lecturer, and remained there about three years (Shepard, Autobiogr.; Young, Massachusetts Chronicles, p. 518).

In 1633 Stone sailed for New England in company with John Cotton and Thomas Hooker [q. v.], as an assistant to the latter. Hooker and Stone arrived in Boston on 4 September and went at once to Newtown (now Cambridge), where, on 11 Oct., they were chosen pastor and teacher respectively. In 1636 Hooker and Stone, with the majority of the inhabitants, removed to a new settlement on the Connecticut, which they called Hartford, after Stone's birthplace. In the following year Stone accompanied the Hartford contingent in the expedition against the Pequot Indians, which broke the power of that tribe.

In 1656 differences arose between Stone and William Goodwin, the ruling elder, concerning the former's method of exercising his functions of teacher. As a consequence Stone resigned his office, but was induced to resume it shortly after. The controversy ended in schism, Goodwin with several church members withdrawing to Hadley in 1659. Stone died at Hartford on 20 July 1663.

Stone was twice married. By his second wife, Elizabeth Allyn, whom he espoused in 1641, he had four surviving children—a son Samuel and four daughters, Elizabeth, Rebecca, Mary, and Sarah.

Stone published ‘A Congregational Church, a Catholike Visible Church,’ London, 1652, 4to, in answer to Samuel Hudson's ‘Visible Catholick Church’ (1645, 4to), and left two works in manuscript: a catechism and a confutation of the Antinomians.